IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Japan to phase out nuclear power --- sort of; US nuke whistleblower warns of new risks; Shell gives up on Arctic drilling --- for now; PLUS: It's official: August 2012 was hot --- really hot ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

In what he calls a "global disaster" now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for "urgent" consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures.

In an email to the Guardian he says: "Climate change is no longer something we can aim to do something about in a few decades' time, and that we must not only urgently reduce CO2 emissions but must urgently examine other ways of slowing global warming, such as the various geoengineering ideas that have been put forward."

White ice reflects more sunlight than open water, acting like a parasol. Melting of white Arctic ice, currently at its lowest level in recent history, is causing more absorption. Prof Wadhams calculates this absorption of the sun's rays is having an effect "the equivalent of about 20 years of additional CO2 being added by man".

Officials from environmental organizations immediately said the containment dome’s damage revealed design defects... Niel Lawrence, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, “Shell is proving it is the gang that can’t drill straight. Its spill response barge had hundreds of problems; its drill ship broke anchor and nearly drifted aground while still in harbor; and a day after Shell said it was safe to drill, it had to pull out and run from a 30-mile-wide iceberg.”

As detailed in the Center for American Progress report, Putting a Freeze on Arctic Ocean Drilling: America’s Inability to Respond to an Oil Spill in the Arctic, the dearth of supporting infrastructure throughout Alaska’s North Slope — including ports, roads, railroads, and permanent Coast Guard facilities — coupled with the lack of sound science and extremely volatile conditions make offshore operations extremely difficult and hazardous. The remote location, harsh and unpredictable conditions, and absence of proven clean-up technologies designed for Arctic conditions would make large-scale response efforts nearly impossible.

A Cabinet panel on Friday called for Japan to phase out nuclear power over the next three decades in what would be a major shift of national energy policy prompted by the Fukushima meltdowns.

Reversing Japan's decades-long advocacy of nuclear power is popular with the public, though it faces opposition from powerful business interests. The new policy calls for greater reliance on renewable energy, more conservation and sustainable use of fossil fuels and would see Japan joining Germany in turning its back on nuclear energy.

The question of a gap in regulations was first raised early this year by Gregory B. Jaczko, the commission’s previous chairman, who advanced the idea that the commission’s goals were so flawed that what transpired at Fukushima could have been judged to meet the agency’s safety standards.

In a letter [pdf] submitted Friday afternoon to internal investigators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a whistleblower engineer within the agency accused regulators of deliberately covering up information relating to the vulnerability of U.S. nuclear power facilities that sit downstream from large dams and reservoirs.

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

The battle over global warming in Prince William County Circuit Court, focused on renowned climate scientist Michael E. Mann, was either an assault on science or a search for the truth, depending on whose briefs you were reading. But after reading all the briefs, a judge ruled Monday that Mann’s e-mail correspondence was exempt from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and did not have to be provided to the American Tradition Institute, which was trying to delve into the discussions and data behind Mann’s conclusions that humans are causing the Earth to grow hotter.

Fox's Stuart Varney complained today that "the establishment media blames the Middle East" for rising gas prices, rather than "President Obama's energy policy." But an hour later, Fox News became part of the "establishment media," correctly noting that gas prices are up due to tension in the Middle East, not Obama's policies.

A corroded pipe that failed and triggered a leak and massive fire at one of California’s largest refineries had walls as thin as a penny in some areas, federal investigators said. U.S. Chemical Safety Board officials said late Tuesday that a key part of their probe into the fire at the plant in Richmond, Calif., is why Chevron Corp. didn’t replace the pipe during a routine inspection a year ago.

Thousands of farmers are filing insurance claims this year after drought and triple-digit temperatures burned up crops across the nation's Corn Belt, and some experts are predicting record insurance losses — exacerbated by changes that reduced some growers' premiums.

Halliburton Co. has reached out to the National Guard for help in the search for a seven-inch radioactive rod used in the drilling of natural gas wells, according to Oilprice.com. Workers lost the device earlier this week in southwestern Texas.

Wind energy equipment manufacturer Siemens Energy Inc. will lay off 615 workers in Iowa, Kansas, and Florida in part because Congress has not renewed a tax credit for wind energy, the company said Tuesday.

Rebels and militias across Africa have discovered the illegal trade in elephant ivory. Coveted in Asia, their tusks bring in handsome sums that are funding wars across the continent. Many game wardens hardly stand a chance against the slaughter.

Can we make the radical changes necessary to meet that challenge? No, say climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows in a recent commentary in Nature Climate Change, not “within orthodox political and economic constraints.”
...In other words: We either give up economic growth voluntarily for a little while or suffer a climate that will reverse economic growth long-term.

For the first time, power from the ocean is making its way onto a U.S. grid.
Ocean Renewable Power Company said Thursday that Bangor Hydro Electric Company had confirmed that electricity was flowing from ORPC's Cobscook Bay Tidal Project in Maine.

Human activity is affecting Earth in many ways, but a new study suggests that continued population growth and its impact on climate and ecology could trigger a more profound chain reaction of effects within little more than a decade.

Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.

It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. "Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake" footing. That simply won't be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It's not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.

The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.
...
"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there's no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. "If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there's been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political," he said.
...Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it."

Having just witnessed climate change in action on an Arctic campaign, Greenpeace International head Kumi Naidoo professed, "I am shit scared." Despite the fact that the Arctic seems far away, Naidoo said, "What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic."

(Arctic Sea Ice Loss). There is a slide presentation that shows the things we can expect to lose as time goes on and we do not turn this around.